In your Wildest Dreams: Ensor Beyond Impressionism

James Ensor, Skeletons Warming Themselves, 1889, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

One of several exhibitions marking the Ensor Year 2024, In Your Wildest Dreams tracks how the Belgian artist unleashed his creativity to become a rebellious gamechanger. Ensor's universe of fierce visions, carnival and ‘zwanze’ (jesting) departed from the classical European ideal conception of beauty, and from Impressionism, which initially fascinated him so much. His chimerical images or expressive choice of colour influenced others, such as Emil Nolde. The exhibition presents this artistic evolution by way of the major landmarks that defined Ensor's career and presenting his art alongsdie that of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. Although he copied lighting effects from these artists, the exhibition shows how he judged the content of their work too innocuous.

The exhibition also includes detailed drawings and powerful etchings and the ambitious Temptation of Saint Anthony, a gigantic collage of 51 sheets of paper populated with a hallucinatory mix of social criticism, science and technology.